For children to succeed, they need to read. 13 ON YOUR SIDE wants to get families reading! Children from families that read and have books in the home have more success in life than those who don’t. Reading early affects their whole lives.
One of our community partners is Kent District Library and their program for young readers called Mission: Read. The program challenges kids to read for a thousand days before the 6th grade. That's an ambitious goal.
However, reading doesn't come easily for every child. Some are challenged by the sounds of letters and words while others may be limited by their understanding of vocabulary or can't make sense of what they've read. That's where these Mission: Read! Booster Packs come in.
Each Booster Pack is tailored for kids in kindergarten through 3rd grade and focuses on one of the five specific aspects of reading improvement: comprehension, fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics and vocabulary. This new county-wide initiative helps kids learn to love reading and meet requirements of the new Read By Grade Three law in Michigan. Each pack contains books and high quality educational games and activities to engage families in a fun way.
Parents can visit any KDL branch and check out a grade-level appropriate booster pack at any of KDL’s 19 branches.
If you’d like to donate to purchase one of these Booster Packs for the library, you can go to kdl.org/boosterpacks.
In the videos below, Ashley Smolinski, Youth Librarian at Kent District Library takes you through a sample of what’s inside each type of booster pack.